Undergraduate Education Overview

Courses Offered for the Upcoming Semester

Current and Past Semester Courses

Instructors

Undergraduate Certificate

Documentary Studies Courses and Cross-Listed Courses

Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies

Student Opportunities at CDS




Past Semester Courses

Spring 2005

DOCST 100S Children and the Experience of Illness
Instructor: Moses
W 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 201)
An exploration of how children cope with illness, incorporating the tools of documentary photography and writing. Students will work outside class with a child who is ill and teach them how to use a Polaroid camera, working towards an exhibit of photographs at the end of the semester. Permission required. No prerequisites.


DOCST 115 Introduction to Photography
Instructor: Hunter
MW 10:05-11:20 (Lyndhurst 201)
Foundation class in black-and-white photographic process as the basis for using photography as a visual language. Students learn to make a printable exposure using black-and-white film, make a "proper proof," and make an 8 x 10 enlargement. Assignments include portraits, alternative techniques, landscape, and a final portfolio that embodies a single visual idea. Consent of instructor required.


DOCST 117 Documentary Photography and the Southern Cultural Landscape
Instructor: Rankin
TTH 10:05-11:20 (Lyndhurst 201)
Emphasis on the tradition and practice of documentary photography as a way of seeing and interpreting cultural life. Includes the techniques of black-and-white photography—exposure, development, and printing—and diverse ways of representing the cultural landscape of the region through photographic imagery. Also covers the roles that objectivity, clarity, politics, memory, autobiography, and local culture play in the making and dissemination of photographs.


DOCST 118S Alternative Photo Processes
Instructor: Hunter
TH 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 201)
Survey of historic photographic processes, including Gun Bichromate, Cyanotype, Kalotype, and Platinum/Palladium printing.


DOCST 125S Behind the Veil
Instructor: Jones
MW 1:15-2:30 (Lyndhurst 001)
Oral history methodology and documentary techniques, centered on the Jim Crow South. Focus on the Behind the Veil project oral history collection, video, audio, and secondary reading materials. Demography, theory, and practice of oral history documentary methodology, fundraising, preservation, processing, dissemination, promotion, releases, copyright, and other legal matters.


DOCST 135S Introduction to Audio Documentary
Instructor: Biewen
T 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 104)
Recording techniques and audio mixing on digital editing software for the production of audio (radio) documentaries. Various approaches to audio documentary work, from the journalistic to the personal; use of fieldwork to explore cultural differences. Stories told through audio, using National Public Radio-style form, focusing on a particular social concern such as war and peace, death and dying, or civil rights.


DOCST 144S Literacy Through Photography
Instructor: Ewald and Hyde
T 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 201)
Children's self-expression and child development through writing, photography, and documentary work. Focus on the reading and critical interpretation of images. The history, philosophy, and methodology of Literacy Through Photography. Includes internship in elementary/middle-school classrooms.


DOCST 150S Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking
Instructor: Hawkins
TH 3:05-5:35 TH 7:30-8:45 (Lyndhurst 104)
Intermediate to advanced filmmaking techniques. Presumes a working knowledge of Final Cut Pro, mini-DV camera, and some fieldwork experience with a camcorder. Topics include fieldwork in a variety of communities and work on pertinent social and cultural issues. Prerequisite: Documentary Studies 105S or equivalent experience and knowledge.


DOCST 177S Advanced Documentary Photography
Instructor: Sartor
T 7:15-9:45 (Lyndhurst 201)
An advanced course for students who have taken the prerequisite course or have had substantial experience in documentary fieldwork. Students complete an individual photographic project and study important works within the documentary tradition. Prerequisite: ARTSVIS 118S, PUBPOL 176S, DOCST 176S, or consent of instructor.


DOCST 190S.01 Civil Rights and Labor Struggles
Instructor: Rubio
TH 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 001)
Oral history fieldwork and “writing in the discipline” seminar. Encourages students through readings and practical activity to think critically about connections between civil rights and labor history in the U.S. Emphasis on creating an independent oral history research project based on an interview with someone whose life story relates to civil rights and labor struggles at Duke or in the Durham area; the finished product should be ready for archiving. Course develops an understanding of the methodological as well as technical components of oral history interviewing, different kinds of writing on history and culture, and discovering an original writing style.


DOCST 190S.02 Photographing Landscape
Instructor: Ewald and Whetstone
M 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 201)
Advanced photography course exploring the theory and practice of landscape photography. Students will examine how photography has been used to survey and record the natural world and how artists use the landscape as metaphor, responding to and intervening in the modern environment. Robertson course at UNC and Duke. Instructor permission required.


DOCST 190S.03 Writing Fiction, Decoding American History
Instructor: Allan Gurganus is the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill for Fall 2004-Spring 2005
W 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 113)
This class involves telling our own valued personal tales even as we trace — within them — those national and historical traits we all embody. A Fiction Writing Class is meant to be protective of its writers' Personal Lives. Other courses are intent on charting the national, historic sources that continually shape our expectations, our very present-tense methodology. Whereas this class seeks to fuse these two lines of inquiry. We will study those documents that hint at essential elements of the American Self: from Locke to Franklin to Twain to Faulkner to Toni Morrison to Soap Opera News. The class seeks to fuse the creation of "personal" fiction with an exploration of our collective inheritance via "public" documents, emblematic autobiographies, group explanations. Students will write their own tales. Some of these will be ventriloquized in the manner of great American novelists, criminals, presidents. The documentary impulse will be conjoined and complicated by that of personal subject matter. Instructor permission and writing sample required.

For a full course description, see Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill


DOCST 190S.04 Making a Difference Through Photography
Instructor: Weinberg
M 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 001)
Course will examine the universal genre of “committed photography,” using the range of work produced by South African photographers, pre-apartheid and post-apartheid, exploring the ways in which political and social events have impacted their work and vision. Students will be required to complete a documentary project that engages issues and themes either in contemporary society or in their own personal lives.


DOCST 190S.05 Documentary Fieldwork Practicum
Instructor: Thompson
W 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 001)
Combines the concept of community collaboration with student work. Working with communities interested in their own documentation, members of this course assist CDS staff and faculty in completing documentary projects that include community museums, films, Web sites, and publications about the community. Readings relate to community work, ethics, and special problems of doing fieldwork. This semester, the Concerned Citizens of Tillery, an African American New Deal community in rural North Carolina, has asked for help documenting their community and setting up their community museum, known as History House. Students will participate in this project directly and should be committed to some travel. Read more about the exhibit that resulted from this course.


DOCST 196S Capstone Seminar
Instructor: Harris
M 3:05-5:35 (Lyndhurst 113)
Immersion in fieldwork-based inquiry and in-depth projects that serve as Certificate in Documentary Studies capstone experiences for students. Methods of documentary fieldwork, including participant observation, and modes of arts and humanities interpretation through a variety of mediums (including papers, film, photography exhibits, radio pieces, and performances). Consent of instructor required. Prerequisite: Documentary Studies 101. Read about the projects that resulted from this course.

See listing of required and elective certificate courses

Fall 2004

Spring 2004

Fall 2003

Spring 2003





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Untitled, from the series Latino Pastimes—La Vida y el Fútbol. Photograph by William L. Plaxico, from the course "Documentary Photography and the Southern Cultural Landscape," taught by Professor Tom Rankin.